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Just saw news of Dianne Feinstein's death. So does this mean an election to fill her vacant seat? How soon? Likely candidates? Replaced by a more progressive (more woke) or a more liberal (not woke) Democrat? Thoughts and opinions on this?
Low effort top level post. This is against the rules. I strongly doubt that you don't know this. 1 day ban.
This seems excessive. I agree that the post could use more original analysis than she offered, but this is a breaking-news sort of situation that could have important implications, and I think it’s reasonable to want to spark a quick discussion of the major questions sparked by this development.
We are for discussion. Start the discussion if you are a top level post.
We are not for breaking news.
If all you have is questions and no real discussion to add consider:
Normally this kind of thing is only a warning or not brought up at all by the other mods. But what's the point of a rule if it is never enforced? Bad luck of the draw getting me as the reviewer of the post. I am not a fan of infinite warnings.
Fair enough, point #2 strikes me as particularly compelling.
The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"
There is no rule against posts that aren't effort posts. Most effort posts are bad. I'm worried were incentivizing people to write a lot of uninteresting wordy posts just so that they can start a discussion on something interesting. I don't see the harm in asking what other people think about something. What I think we do want is something to stop people from posting just anything. There should be something to explain why something is worthy of discussion. I don't see why it has to be something that requires a lot of effort.
Can you come up with another proxy that keeps intelligent people who do write interesting things coming back to the site, and stops the Motte from turning into the rest of the internet?
The effort is a bar you have to clear to participate here.
We have lots of other rules that have sort of accomplished this goal despite not having requiring all top-level posts to be effortposts.
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There is no harm in asking people questions. Which is why we have a small questions Sunday thread. It doesn't have to be used exclusively on Sunday, it can be used all week.
That is explicitly for dumb questions though.
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lol, I mean sorry, but picturing someone despondent because their internet post didn't make it out of the oven fast enough is just embarrassing.
If you have a long effort post to make, why not just make it as a reply to a less narrow top level post like the one above? Shorter posts like this generally have a much broader scope and therefore you can have a lot more replies and jump off into a larger variety of topics. If someone writes a 10 page essay about that time Feinstein almost got killed by left wing terrorists in response to her passing then people that might want to discuss some more topical aspects of the event are forced to post an entirely new top level comment. Which is obnoxious considering this place is already a chore to navigate and horribly disorganized. Especially for anyone trying to find older discussions.
Rude as hell. Have you ever actually worked on an effort-post and contributed a seriously valuable top level comment here? It takes a lot of work to do it well.
You come in here, lurk and benefit off of people that put in time and effort to provide you intellectual stimulation and entertainment, then mock them for doing so. Not a good look.
I generally skim the top levels and am just here for the comments. Much like media posts on reddit. We don't all derive the same utility from the same things.
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Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.
The people here are interesting, but everything else about this place makes it so obnoxious to use that I go through phases of being frustrated by the limited means of engagement and the convoluted rules.
It's rather ironic to complain about posts generating more heat than light when you obviously don't apply the same standards to your moderation. Maybe the reason this post when to shit was you jumping in all "bad cop" to try and save the quokka effortposters from their despondency. You think of that maybe?
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That isn’t really a response to the criticism. Pure ad hominem. I even understand your position but shouldn’t you hold yourself to a higher standard
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